Re: Make Date header not required

[Amos Jeffries <[e-mail]>]

On 1/09/20 3:14 am, Sergey Ponomarev wrote:
> The Date header MUST be added to the response but at the same time it
> may be omitted if the origin server doesn't have a good clock. It looks
> like the header is useful only if server or client have misconfigured
> time but the server also returns an Expires header that uses a fixed date.
> That's why the header was replaced with more robust Cache-Control that
> uses max-age with relevant time instead of fixed.

You have this wrong. Skew between endpoints affects both Expires and
Cache-Control calculations equally badly. Date is the only way to
determine the skew offset.

You are also overlooking cases such as server-side caching. The Date
header is the time the response was generated and not the time it was
delivered to the client.


Amos